The Power of Collaboration in Rapid Application Development

McKinsey & Company found that a team-based approach to project completion significantly helped software companies become more agile, responsive, and competitive in the last decade.

But this approach doesn’t need to be limited to engineers in the software industry. It can be expanded to include business users working across all departments in any industry.

Particularly with a rapid application development platform like Caspio, almost anyone can contribute to application projects. People with different skills such as analytical thinking, usability, and problem solving can all work together to enhance the outcome.

Consider the following steps in your next application project:

1. Start with brainstorming.
When you’re starting on a new application project, it’s always a good idea to brainstorm first before finalizing your requirements. A good practice for brainstorming is to collect thoughts from everybody, not only from the project team but also from the end users and other departments who may be facing similar challenges.

2. Prepare a Product Requirements Document (PRD).
Evaluate the collected ideas and create a PRD that describes the application’s purpose, features and workflow. The PRD will serve as a reference document for the project team to build the application.

3. Collect feedback and finalize the PRD.
Share the PRD with all the people who are involved in the planning process and collect their feedback. As the project owner, you may not want to take action on all ideas, but take what’s most helpful and create an updated version of your PRD. At this stage, you may also want to prioritize features and functionalities so you can clearly see what’s needed in the first version of the solution.

4. Build “Version 1” of the application.
Start building the application. Focus on your highest priority features to finish what’s known as the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The idea is to do quick iterations during the development process to finally get where it needs to be. With Caspio, this step should be going fast.

5. Keep iterating and improving.
Once the first version is out, let people use it. You can continue to develop the second version of the app based on your PRD while collecting improvement feedback from actual users. With Caspio, you can make changes to an application on-the-fly at any time during the process.

6. Keep spirits high.
Collaborating on an application can be a fun experience or it can be an excruciatingly-long and frustrating task. As the project owner, try to keep the team excited as they move through the process. A rapid app development tool like Caspio allows you show continuous progress and deliver results fast – which greatly helps the team stay motivated and focused on achieving the common vision.

Besides creating a solid application, involving more people in the process also improves end-user adoption since more people will be familiar with and invested in the project.

For help planning your next application project, request a free project consultation and one of our product experts will get you started in the right direction.